What can we take from two recent Putin speeches?

Vladimir Putin on Friday formally announced the annexation of additional areas in Ukraine. And he made a few other ideological points and a notable threat along with it: Steve Rosenberg, Ukraine war: Putin raises stakes in speech full of anti-Western bile BBC News 09/30/2022; Extracts from Putin's speech at annexation ceremony Reuters 09/30/2022.

This is the official English text of the speech from the Kremlin website: Signing of treaties on accession of Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions to Russia 09/30/2022.

It's tempting for Americans and Europeans to assume that Putin's Russia is driven by a clear ideology. Because that assumption fits easily into the general understanding of the Cold War. In fact, The USSR was guided by its ideology. But it repeatedly showed itself also very capable of making coldly pragmatic calculations based on geopolitical realities, e.g., the German-Soviet Nonagression Pact of 1939.

But while we can talk about Putinism in ideological terms, it seems to be a fairly vague mixture of reactionary Orthodox Christian theocracy, Russian nationalism, superficial and tendentious historical claims, and fairly transparent slogans to justify territorial aggression.

Here is a version of Putin's Christian ideas:

[T]he dictatorship of the Western elites targets all societies, including the citizens of Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism. Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” (my emphasis)

And one of the vague Russian nationalism: "The battlefield to which destiny and history have called us is a battlefield for our people, for the great historical Russia. For the great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them against enslavement and monstrous experiments that are designed to cripple their minds and souls."

And the mystical Russian nationalism applied to a particular land grab:

Behind these words stands a glorious spiritual choice, which, for more than a thousand years of Russian statehood, was followed by many generations of our ancestors. Today, we are making this choice; the citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics and the residents of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions have made this choice. They made the choice to be with their people, to be with their Motherland, to share in its destiny, and to be victorious together with it.

The Russian claim to the Ukrainian land it has formally annexed has no basis in international law. And Stephen Wertheim argues that it is on the basis of sovereignty, which is also a part of any democratic world order, that the US should frame its support of Ukraine, not on vaguer ideological claims (The One Key Word Biden Needs to Invoke on Ukraine The Atlantic 06/11/2022):

The assault on Ukraine strikes at the core right of states to preserve their sovereign independence. This is an axiom that countries on all continents hold dear. Many nations in the global South remember colonial rule and continue to fear great-power exploitation. Even the government of India, which has drawn criticism in the West for opposing sanctions on Moscow and buying up discounted Russian oil, has shown its disapproval of Putin’s breaches of international law.

The Biden administration also has condemned Russia for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and for using force in breach of the UN Charter. But the United States does itself no favors when it appears to cast its cause first and foremost as a defense of democracy. The implication is that the United States places greater value on democracy than on sovereignty. This leaves potential partners to ponder whether Biden regards the sovereignty of other nations as conditional, worthy of support only if they qualify as democratic in the eyes of the West. Instead of uniting more states around universal values, Biden risks repelling them. [my emphasis]

Putin even brought up one of the current favorite demagogic themes of the global far right, anti-LBGTQ hostility including transphobia:

[D]o we want to have here, in our country, in Russia, “parent number one, parent number two and parent number three” (they have completely lost it!) instead of mother and father? Do we want our schools to impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, perversions that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want to drum into their heads the ideas that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery? Is that what we want for our country and our children? This is all unacceptable to us. We have a different future of our own.

Annika Brockschmidt comments on Jason Stanley's reaction at a Yale conference on Christian nationalism to that comment of Putin, linking it to the far-right Italian leader (and likely next prime minister) Giorgia Meloni's position:

"Putin and Meloni say the exact same sentence", says @jasonintrator at @ISPSYale, "claiming 'they will just call you parent 1 and parent 2' which links back to Hitler's critique of democracy, that you will be just a number, that there is no individualism in democracy."

— Annika Brockschmidt (@ardenthistorian) October 1, 2022

Fred Kaplan emphasized the following key points about the speech Putin gave earlier, on September 21 (What the West Should Do About Putin’s Increasingly Dangerous Desperation Slate 09/22/2022):

He made three main points:

First, he announced a “partial mobilization” of reservists to “defend our Motherland” against “the neo-Nazi regime” in Ukraine and its NATO overlords.

Second, he called for referendums in the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaprizhzhia regions of Ukraine—where many Russian ethnics live—to see if they want to be annexed into Russia.

Finally, he warned that, in response to any attack on Russian territory, he would “certainly make use of all weapons systems available to us,” presumably including nuclear weapons, adding, “This is not a bluff.”

And he notes:

By all accounts, [Putin] is egomaniacal, in the pocket (intellectually and spiritually) of ultra-nationalist kooks, and facing the possibility of defeat in the present war — which he’d thought would spawn his legacy as the rebuilder of the Great Russian Empire.

So this is why the West needs to be a little bit cautious in its words and deeds in Ukraine. Then again, I say “a little bit cautious,” because there is no upside to shirking support for Ukraine in what could be a pivotal moment. There is absolutely no evidence that any restraint would move Putin to the negotiating tables for serious diplomacy. In fact, neither Russia nor Ukraine has any incentive at the moment to do anything but keep fighting. And so President Biden continues to send weapons (another $1 billion worth, with heavier and heavier armaments, seems to be announced every week); the other NATO nations are pulling their weight; and the European countries most heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas are taking significant steps toward finding alternative sources before the winter sets in. [my emphasis]

Kaplan also observes, "the scope of the war is nonetheless becoming the West vs. Russia." Still a proxy war. But it is in fact a proxy war between Russia and NATO, in particular the United States at the same time it is a war of self-defense for Ukraine.